Dart
Mobile· alive, actively evolving· since 2011 · Lars Bak · Google
Language for building Flutter apps, compiled ahead of time to native code or to JavaScript.
Draft from 2026-10-30, not yet checked claim by claim against its sources. Help verify it.
Born from
Google's 2011 launch post, by Lars Bak of the Dart team, set out to create a structured yet flexible language for web programming with high performance on all browsers. In 2015 the Dart team decided not to integrate the Dart VM into Chrome and kept Dart compiling to JavaScript for the web.
What it trades away
Cost: Outside Flutter, Dart has a small library ecosystem and hiring pool, so a Dart team is mostly a Flutter team.
Where it fits
| Slot | Fit | |
|---|---|---|
| mobile | ●●● | Flutter apps are written in Dart. |
| browser | ●○○ | Compiles to JavaScript; Chrome never shipped the Dart VM. |
| server | ●○○ | |
| embedded | ○○○ | Dart has no standard runtime for microcontrollers. |
Why it exists
Google introduced Dart in October 2011. Lars Bak, a Dart team engineer, described it as a language for building web applications and set out to create “a structured yet flexible language for web programming” (Google Code blog). The post said Dart could also run on top of a JavaScript engine through a compiler that translates Dart to JavaScript. In March 2015 the team said it had “decided not to integrate the Dart VM into Chrome” and would focus on compiling Dart to JavaScript (Dart blog).
What it trades away
Dart trades ecosystem size for a tight Flutter stack. Outside Flutter it has a small library ecosystem and hiring pool, so a Dart team is mostly a Flutter team. On the web it is a compiler target rather than a browser language: Dart runs in the browser only as compiled JavaScript, because Chrome never shipped the Dart VM (Dart blog). The language itself is statically typed and garbage-collected. Dart 3 made null safety fully sound, so a non-nullable type can never hold null (Dart 3 announcement).
Where it won
Flutter is where Dart won. The official Flutter showcase lists Google Pay with a case study headlined “Going global at Google Pay with Flutter”, BMW Group’s work on customer-facing product development, and Alibaba’s account of scaling China’s largest second-hand marketplace with Flutter (Flutter showcase). Flutter 1.0 shipped in December 2018 alongside Dart 2.1, so the framework and the language reached developers together (InfoQ).
Named wins
- Google Pay, a Flutter case study on the official showcase source
- BMW Group, a Flutter case study on scaling customer-facing product development source
- Alibaba, which scaled China's largest second-hand marketplace with Flutter source
Evolution
Reacts to: JavaScript
Weigh it against: Kotlin, Swift, TypeScript, JavaScript
Timeline
- 2011Google announces Dart on October 10 as a language for web applications source
- 2015Google drops the plan to put the Dart VM in Chrome and focuses on compiling Dart to JavaScript source
- 2018Flutter 1.0 ships in December, alongside Dart 2.1 source
- 2023Dart 3 makes null safety fully sound and adds records, patterns and class modifiers source
Links
Sources
- https://googlecode.blogspot.com/2011/10/dart-language-for-structured-web.html
- https://news.dartlang.org/2015/03/dart-for-entire-web.html
- https://www.infoq.com/news/2018/12/flutter-1.0-released
- https://dart.cn/blog/announcing-dart-3
- https://flutter.dev/showcase
- https://pldb.io/concepts/dart.html
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